


call it gravity

by onnari



Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23907502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnari/pseuds/onnari
Summary: Okay, she thinks when he accepts with a shrug and a distant look. Back into her orbit he goes and that’s where he’ll stay. Using each other as forward, almost unconscious momentum, to get through their days but never meeting fully.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	call it gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this remake certainly has me back on my old shit.

For them there’s always been a distance. Emotionally, they’re too prone to close themselves off, keeping things in that might otherwise bridge the distance between them. Physically, it’s like they’ve drawn a line between them, neither able to cross it. Even as kids, they hadn’t been close. Not really. There’d only been the hope, unacted upon.

The closest they’d come was when Cloud had called her out to say goodbye, armed with a vow to make something of himself. She smiled, looking away, but there was tightness in her chest, too. Some kind of sorrow at the finality of his words, a more permanent distance coming between them, and she could not help but ask for a promise in turn. Something to keep them connected.

She’d kept that promise close to her heart, something to think about when sleep wouldn’t come and she was at her lowest. But as the years went on with no word from him, picking herself back up over and over and learning to save herself, she’d come to forget about the two of them and all the things they’d never really had. There was too much else that required her attention. Immediate, present concerns that came with building community and filling her life with people that needed her.

So of course that’s when he walks back into her life, looking as lost as she had when first arriving in Midgar. So of course she gets him a job, roping him into what she knows she probably shouldn’t. She can’t help herself, wanting to help him, even when she’d made him promise to look out for her.

Okay, she thinks when he accepts with a shrug and a distant look. Back into her orbit he goes and that’s where he’ll stay. Using each other as forward, almost unconscious momentum, to get through their days but never meeting fully. Never in things together.

Tifa is careful to remember that, to put the appropriate distance between them when it is just the two of them and anything could happen. But somehow he surprises her, makes her put down her guard when words turn unexpectedly teasing. Playful and almost light. With her arms at her sides, defenseless, they go straight for her heart.

Her pulse kicks up and before she knows it she’s asking. Not hoping, she tells herself, just asking if he’ll stick around. But she knows she’s in trouble as soon as he says maybe. Even worse when he brings her back to the promise she'd made him take on. That he'd stick around if she was in trouble. And she is, in heart and body and mind.

They fall further into AVALANCHE and isn’t that apt somehow, the way the distance between them begins to fracture and crumble in the heady rush of danger, happening so quickly that Tifa doesn’t even have time to process it, acting on instinct and the comfort that comes with closeness. The sense of reassurance and support. How suddenly they’re very much in this together, fighting a common enemy that draws them to each other’s side, leaning on each other to see themselves through.

And though she didn’t let herself make anything of it, worries that he’s still not himself or with her there completely, she’s no fool. She can hear the softness, the care, in his tone and in his touch. Feels there is something there between them, something gentle and fragile that leads her to him when emotion gets the best of her. Lets herself really feel her loss, traveling back to a time and place where only he can follow.

She senses him hesitate, at a loss, but even then she cannot make herself immediately pull away. Lets herself cry and take a moment more of comfort. It’s only when she thinks it’s all been a mistake, that she’s done exactly what she shouldn’t, that his arms come around her, sure and steady and even painful in a way they have not been before. Tifa thinks she understands though, thinks she knows that kind of embrace. Holding on as tightly as you can to anything good and real and solid.

That’s the life she leads, too. Desperate and more than a little lonely, always seeking someone to reach out to, holding herself back more times than not. Maybe, Tifa dares to hope, they could find what they were looking for in each other. She’s tired of the years and the distance that’s come to define them. Wants to strike them both down.

The world is already burning. Let the weight they carry, the gravity of them, bring them closer instead.

**Author's Note:**

> If I was actually able to do longfic it would be over for everyone. Cause if ever a ship was meant for a sweet, sweet slow burn... 
> 
> Catch me (a bit) on tumblr.


End file.
